Moonlight

Parmi les nominations noires aux Oscars, celle-ci est probablement la meilleure. Tout de même, je ne suis pas totalement convaincu par sa nomination dans la catégorie du meilleur film. Le dernier tiers est carrément raté et barbant et, mieux développés, les deux premiers tiers auraient pu donner un drame poignant centré sur deux minorités et un phénomène pathologique de société. Pour la deuxième fois aujourd’hui, j’échoue à identifier Janelle Monáe, mais j’en profite pour féliciter Naomie Harris pour sa prestation, car notre Miss Moneypenny joue comme si sa vie en dépendait et est la seule à vraiment mériter un Oscar. (26/02/2017)

Manchester by the Sea m'a touché davantage. Il était plus émotionnellement riche, plus développé au niveau des relations et plus détaillé. Moonlight traite des sujets délicats dans un environnement rude de manière admirablement subtile, mais trop frugalement. Il s'appuie sur la poésie des inserts artistiques, des ralentissements et des détails silencieux des visages, là où il aurait pu s'exprimer clairement. Je reconnais la direction d'auteur ainsi que les qualités d'acteur élevées. J'ai apprécié suivre la transformation du personnage principal dans ses trois phases de vie et explorer son développement interne. Cependant, je reste indemne. Le battage médiatique autour de Moonlight est plus politique que mérité. C'est une réaction au "gâchis" racial de l'année dernière. Néanmoins, il est bon que cela se soit produit, ne serait-ce que pour les sentiments actuels répandus dans le monde, diffusés par ses leaders. (27/02/2017)

If there’s one thing you have to grant to this film, it is the fact that Barry Jenkins is a very skilled director, who took on board with him James Laxton, who is s an equally skilled director of photography. And even though all this skill goes hand in hand with the actors, whose performances aren’t bad at all, my biggest issue is with the topic, which is not uninteresting, but I was more into it from the perspective of the Oscar nominations. You see, it’s really hard to me to follow the life fate of young Chiron, who lives in a society that is totally beyond me. There’s nobody in this movie I can understand and I simply watch young Chiron, who has trouble expressing himself and who’s simply observing everything as if from a distance. He probably can’t even see that the things that are going on around him are not ideal, but he can do nothing about it himself, so he’s simply trying to adjust, but despite that he wants to form an opinion of his own. A strange film, well made, but to me it was very inaccessible. It was really hard for me to find any emotion that I could at least catch on to. (14/02/2017)

A homosexual black man in a successful film? Some honest Czechs will pop a vein. To me Moonlight is simply a good film and a quality drama. Though its theme naturally works like automatic award bait, I didn’t feel any cynicism or insincerity from it. It makes for a pretty unpleasant viewing that is painful in many ways, but to be fully satisfied I needed a somewhat stronger final catharsis. (05/02/2017)

A two-part film. Almost everything that is remarkable about it has its downside. Apart from the acting performances, which are the strongest thing that Moonlight has to offer. The division into three parts and the reliance on the outlets come out alternately, in some places an impressive tension arises between the unspoken cause and effect, whilst elsewhere the film feels a little broken or leaky. Laxton's camera, which can conjure up an intoxicating vortex trajectory, sometimes slides into mannerist conventional details. The music sometimes dries out, but sometimes it goes great with what is not directly said (the scene in the restaurant in the third part). It is a problematic emancipation film on both levels - it creates the main character, who is more approximate than captivating. And it speaks of the identities of a minority without deriving them from its relationship to the oppressive majority (like 12 Years a Slave) or making this relationship a main topic at all. Rather than a radical social image, Moonlight is a lyrical portrait of personality changes - and this is where it has considerable limits. The experience from the film is so very inspiring and unsatisfactory... Respect mixed with doubts. (22/02/2017)